Gomes Eanes de Zurara

Gomes Eanes de Zurara (1410-1474) was Chief Chronicler of Portugal from 1454 to 1474. In 1453, he wrote The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, which retold the Portuguese conquest of Guinea and the start of the Atlantic slave trade.

Biography
Gomes Eanes de Zurara was born in Portugal in 1410, and he served as a learned and obedient commander in Prince Henry the Navigator's Military Order of Christ before being commissioned by King Afonso V of Portugal to write a biography of the life and slave-trading work of Henry. Zurara published The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea in 1453, a book which was later seen as the inaugural defense of African slave-trading. He chronicled the arrival of the first six slave caravels, holding 240 slaves, in Lagos, Portugal on 6 August 1444. By this time, the Slavs, who had long been seized as slaves by Turkish raiders from around the Black Sea, had built forts against slave raiders and ceased to be the main source of slaves, and the Portuguese revolutionized the enslavement of Africans. His narrative covered from 1434 to 1447, during which time 927 enslaved Africans were brought to Portugal and converted to Catholicism; he ignored the fact that 185 of the captives were given to Henry as his royal fifth (quinto), which added to his immense fortune. The manuscript was circulated among the royal court, scholars, investors, and captains, leading to the expansion of the slave trade to the Indian Ocean during the 1490s. Zurara died in 1474.